Page 75 of People Skills

‘He took the divorce the hardest. He was the only one still at home when it happened.’

‘Right. He told me a bit about that.’

‘Interesting.’

‘What’s interesting?’

‘He tells you things.’

‘Well, we do live in the same house.’

‘I lived with him for a year in our twenties and he told me nothing. He certainly never asked me to shave his head.’

‘I have a face that people tell things to.’

‘God, you do. Look at me—telling you all my secrets within minutes of meeting you.’

He grins at me, and I know that look. That’s a flirting look. But James is the kind of man who either ignores you or flirts with you, I decide. I know this kind of man. I suspect Graham is also that kind of man.

We pull up to the house and James sighs. ‘Back into hell. Is there some kind of therapy I can do to wipe my mind?’

‘I think you need exposure therapy. If you see what you are afraid of enough times, it’ll stop haunting you.’

‘You are a very sick person.’

He smiles at me, and there’s that flirting again, I think. Or maybe Xavier last night has awakened something in me, and now I see flirting everywhere.

I need to get Xavier, and his brother, out of my head.

20

SINCE WE LAUNCHED the program, everything with the festival has been going incredibly smoothly, but three disasters hit almost simultaneously on Monday morning.

At nine-thirty, Jamila gasps and stands up. ‘Lily Yates has just publicly accused Felicity Parry of plagiarism!’

‘What?’ Kat and I yelp in unison. Lily and Felicity are both young poets who have huge followings on social media, and they were to be appearing on a panel together called ‘The New Generation of Poetry Superstars’ which was one of our first events to sell out.

While Jamila is giving us running updates of what’s happening in the comments section of the post, and whether Felicity has replied, Hillary receives a phone call telling her that the famous husband-and-wife chef team who have a new cookbook out and are headlining an event, are ‘going through some difficulties’ and while not officially separated, and still committed to promoting the book together, their event needs to be ‘handled with care’. Moments later, an email lands telling us that a famous political cartoonist, who was due to appear at the festival for a retrospective of his career, has died peacefully in his sleep.

Three of our most popular events, felled in the space of thirty minutes.

Hillary, though, is energised by the crisis.

‘Right,’ she says, standing in the middle of the room, surveying us all. ‘We’ll likely have to cancel the poetry event, or reduce it to a Q&A with just one of them. Unless they’re both willing to appear and then I’ll moderate and we’ll thrash the whole thing out on stage—I’ll go there if they will.’ Her eyes are glowing at the thought. She loves on-stage drama and conflict.

Hillary says she’ll take over moderating the cookbook event, and she’ll personally call Wendy, the woman of the husband-and-wife chef couple, to talk her through it. Hillary also loves getting involved in marital troubles.

‘And poor Robert, we can still hold the event, it can be a celebration of his life. I’ll see if his old editor wants to host it, I know him.’

Hillary’s energy is undoubtedly manic. Is this because of the sex with Graham? Or maybe it’s the fear of failure, of people saying ‘such a shame about the festival’ in the way they say it about her TV show. But as long as she’s in a good mood, I don’t care what’s causing it.

Hillary keeps talking. ‘Jamila, can you craft something we can post about Robert’s passing, and send it to me, just a “Vale Robert: something about the impact of his work, his talent, blah, blah, blah”, and also keep monitoring the fallout with the poets, let me know if it looks like becoming a legal situation. Draft an email about the event being cancelled that we can send to ticketholders if we need to. Kat, email Linda and let her know that we need to change her schedule for chairing events, I’ll be moderating the chefs now, and we’ll move her over to the crime-and-thriller panel with Anna what’s-her-name. She’ll be fine with it—she told me she’s happy to chair anything. And Charlotte?’

‘Yes?’ I say, blinking through the barrage of information.

‘I need a favour. Murray O’Healy wants to add ten locations to his historical walking tour of the town, which will apparently add something like two hours to the tour. Can you pop around to his place this morning and gently talk him out of it?’

There’s a beat of silence. Murray O’Healy is one of the most stubborn men I’ve had the displeasure of dealing with in this town. I have been tasked with the dud job.